


The Strange Case of the Headhunter and the Human Head

by QuickYoke



Series: to the devil in his own way [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Multi, Other, lots of metaphors and allusions but what else do you expect from me??, mention of Evie Frye/Henry Green
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:42:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a character study on Evie Frye centered around the Jack the Ripper DLC</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strange Case of the Headhunter and the Human Head

  

> _“Ask a headhunter why he cuts off human heads. He’ll say that rage impels him and rage is born of grief. The act of severing and tossing away the victim’s head enables him to throw away the anger of all his bereavements.”_
> 
> _-Anne Carson, Grief Lessons_

 

* * *

* * *

 

“Control yourself, Evie!”

Ethan Frye glared down at her, towering in his great height as she sat upon the floor of their house in Crawley beside her brother. Their father was a new and unknown addition to their lives, but while over the course of the last six months they had viewed him with a mingled sense of awe and fear, there was nothing of fear to be found in Evie now.

In one hand she clutched a hammer -- one of Ethan’s tools scattered about the kitchen while he mended a broken shutter on the downstairs window -- raised overhead, ready to bring the heavy metallic end down on Jacob’s head for calling her names. She was just shy of seven years old and furious.

It was her first memory of real and proper anger, but certainly not her last. Time and time again it would rear its ugly head -- the rage -- and her father taught her strictly to stopper it in a glass jar, contain it with meticulous care. Sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, as quick with a ruler across the knuckles as he was with a blade, a man unable to digest his own grief, Ethan never let her anger slide.

How jealous she felt of Jacob for escaping such scrutiny -- he was never scolded for raising his voice as she was, for slamming his fist against the wall with a snarl. How carefree her twin always seemed, even as Jacob was jealous of her for getting to spend more time with their father. How she would have given it to him if she could.

The smack of a wooden practice blade across her shoulders smarted and Evie hissed. Tightening her grip on her own practice blade, she swerved out of reach. Across the circle Jacob grinned at her, and he twirled his blade with a mocking flourish like a matador brandishing his flag. With a growl Evie leapt at him again, but he parried every battering headlong strike before kicking her in the midriff so that she staggered and fell back, the blow bruising her ego more than anything else.

Before she could fling herself at him and tear at him with hands and teeth, their father’s voice rang out. “Evie! Come here, please!”

With a shout of frustration, she threw down the wooden practice blade to the ground where it bounced once. Sparring was just a part of training, she knew. It was supposed to help them understand each other’s weaknesses, forge bonds, fight better as a team, but all it seemed to achieve was inciting her temper.

Reluctant, she joined their father by the side-lines, where he fixed her with that singular schoolmaster’s stare, reaching out to grasp her shoulder. “You know why you’re having trouble, don’t you?”

“He’s too strong!” Evie kicked at a stray pebble, sending it flying into the nearby grass among a cloud of pale dust.

Her father’s grip on her shoulder tightened, but not painfully so. A warning for her outburst. “Then change tactics. Don’t lose your head, or he’ll take it.”

To emphasise his words, he drew a finger across her neck, then bumped her chin up with one of his knuckles. Turning her back towards the circle where Jacob waited, Ethan nudged her forward.

Surly, Evie stomped back to the centre of the circle and bent over to pick up her practice blade. “You’re becoming awfully familiar with all that dirt,” Jacob teased, gesturing with the tip of his blade to all the dust on her clothes, good-natured at heart, but competitive and vaunting in his own petty way.

She bit back the scathing retort that burned in the back of her throat. Scowling down at her simple training attire, boots scuffed, Evie paused. Then with a smirk of her own, she settled into a stance. No sooner had Jacob crouched down as well, than Evie kicked up a cloud of dust in his face, sending him reeling and spluttering. Ducking to one side, she came at him from an angle, forcing him to give ground, step by step, each strike of her wooden practice blade keeping him off balance until he tripped over his own feet and fell right onto his rear.

Having finally bested him, she shouted her triumph and turned to look for her father’s approval with a fierce grin. Instead he just narrowed his eyes and said. “Again. Less sloppy this time.”

The sting of disappointment hurt more than any bruise Jacob could give her. Sometimes she wished their father had never been a part of their lives, that he had stayed in India or wherever he'd come crawling out of the shadows to take them from their grandmother.

The guilt of thinking such thoughts rubbed raw when their father died of pleurisy. She should have counted every moment in his presence a blessing, as a good daughter ought. She loved him -- of course she did -- but the impotence that washed over her at his passing left her numb, crippled, wondering who would police her anger now, talk her down from the heights of a steep and unspeakable wrath that left her gasping for breath, grasping for control.

After the funeral she stalked off to the pub ahead of Jacob, intent on drowning herself in as much cheap whiskey as she could afford. He didn’t need to see her like this; he couldn’t. This had always been her and father’s secret, and her better self needn’t sully himself with it. Better to bottle it up, to continue to drink down Ethan’s tutelage no matter how much it burned.

When the pub owner threw her out on the street for picking a fight she most definitely would have won with two men twice her size, the night was yet young, the moon hidden behind a blanket of low thick cloud. Rattling what coins were left in her purse, Evie stumbled to a nearby establishment of ill repute, and picked a girl. Any girl. It didn’t matter. Upstairs in the dark and dingy room rented to her for an allotted set of time, Evie fumbled with her own clothes.

“Not often we get a lady in these parts,” the prostitute remarked as she helped strip Evie of her many layers. Her eyes widened when she saw the number of knives tucked away between dark folds. “You a bodyguard or something?”

“Stop talking,” Evie slurred, too drunk to care if anyone had recognised her entering the brothel.

She pushed the girl onto the nearby bed and clambered atop her, pressing their mouths together in an inelegant clash of lip and teeth, burying herself in the flesh in the irrational hope that the anger would abate in its wake. Rushed, almost frenzied, and undoubtedly sloppy, she took her pleasure where she could, raking her nails, dragging her teeth, rewarded with high gasps, spurring her on.

Mussed, bruised, and entirely unsated, Evie staggered away from the brothel and down a seedy alleyway well into the early hours of the morning, nursing a parched throat and a headache to accompany the bubbling ire that never seemed to leave her in peace, magnified tenfold from the too-recent wake. She tripped on a rain-slicked cobblestone, catching herself on the narrow walls and muttering, “Control yourself, Evie.”

“So, you’re the one who gave my boys a hard time at The Cage?”

Blearily she peered at who had spoken. Three men bracketed the end of the alley, fists glinting with brass knuckles like those her brother favoured. Two of their faces she placed at the pub from earlier in the evening.

 _Not tonight_ , she thought with a groan as they advanced upon her. _Any night but tonight._

“What’s that she’s muttering?” One of them asked.

“Who cares?” the leader growled, fixing his corroded brass knuckles more firmly into place. “I can’t believe this skinny bit humiliated you lot in front of all those people.”

Senses dulled by alcohol, she was too slow to dodge the first blow. It struck her in the abdomen, boiling outward, and she tasted black, vision flaring white and all-consuming.

Dawn crept over the horizon, turning the cover of cloud a dull tarnished silver. Three bodies lay sprawled in the dank alley, and Evie wheezed into the space between her knees. It was her first kill, and blood painted her hands up to the elbow, splattered across her chest and half her face -- the slow sensual drip along the line of her jaw, flinching at her own shadow cast across the ground.

It never stopped feeling good, the killing. As she and Jacob moved north and slowly gained control over London, Evie threw herself into the messiness of the city with far too much gusto. She took down Starrick’s gang leaders with teeth-baring victory. Too often she brought back Frederick’s suspects dead, shoving still-warm bodies into carriages and pointedly ignoring his annoyed glares. She relished the iron-black taste as she spat mouthfuls of blood onto the canvas floor of the ring littered with bodies from her brawl -- Robert was always so pleased to see her arrive at his gambling den, calling eagerly for bets even as he eyed her warily askance, as though she were constantly on the cusp of animal furor.

“Don’t allow your personal feelings to compromise the mission.” Her father’s tokens of wisdom rang bitter with the sting of hypocrisy as she launched them at Jacob liked barbed things. He scoffed. They had always meant something different to her, and she was sure to keep the reins in careful check, pulling herself back from the edge whenever she teetered too close to that chasm. She flung father’s words in his face when her anger started to strain at the manacles, as much to reprimand herself as well as Jacob.

Cleaning herself up after the fact was always a trial, the procedures calculated, recursive, and similar. With painstaking caution Evie mopped up each smatter of blood, each wound, concealing bruises with powders and gauze; no evidence could remain. She hated for anyone to see her like this, as she truly was -- especially Jacob; her better self didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. He had nothing of wrath in him.

Not that it kept him from being a stubborn mule at times. Most times, if she was being honest. They fought about everything it seemed, but this was the worst yet. Starrick’s defeat hovered just out of reach, and Jacob was off gallivanting with Roth, nearly bringing the city and the entire British economy crashing to its knees. They could hardly stand to be in the same train carriage together, and Henry wasn’t speaking with her either. Evie preferred to spend the majority of her time clearing out the last of the Templar’s strongholds, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake without a trace, carrying away the satisfaction of a good kill in her jaws.

At least she still had this. At least she could plan a good fight and execute it with ruthless efficiency, feed her own Ahriman.

Slinking back to the train nursing a bloodied lip, both Jacob and Henry looked at her with surprise -- normally she had enough self-discipline to not let an opponent get so close, but fury made her sloppy. It always did. Whereas Henry’s eye lingered, Jacob recovered more quickly.

“You’ll be needing this.” He tossed her a plain brown parcel bound with twine. “And you might want to fix that up before we head to Buckingham palace.”

She tongued the split in her lip, savouring the ferrous sting. Ripping open the package, she groaned at what she found folded up inside, the red velvet dress heavy and voluminous in her arms. Jacob smirked at her dismay, but she pointedly ignored him. The two of them could hardly speak these days for longer than a few minutes, but at least they could work together to take down a common enemy. In the end Jacob would be there for her. Of that there was no doubt.

She always could count on him to pull through.

When at last Starrick lay dead and the Shroud shimmered in Jacob’s hands, Evie felt the potent rush of relief like a physical blow. They had done it. They had liberated the city from the hands of Templars and recovered a Piece of Eden, and when she kissed Henry she dared to think -- even for a moment -- that perhaps it could all work out for the better.

Weeks later during the ensuing elation of peace Henry proposed, presenting her with a bouquet of fragrant flowers. Moving to India felt like a grand adventure, and for a while it was enough. Henry kissed her and it felt like a cool breath of air, all green mint and liquid smooth to the touch. Not rough like her, bones scraping abrasive beneath the skin like another self itching to molt.

For years they travelled. Taking missions where they may. Unfettered, unimpeded. One year Evie tossed a throwing knife at a map blindfolded, and with a rueful laugh Henry paid for passage on a caravan to smuggle them into Tibet. She had been angling to explore those parts for years, and there was no doubt in either of their minds that she’d known exactly where she’d been casting the dart. As best she could for those years of their marriage Evie kept a tight rein, gave herself no fuel upon which to gorge, but she could not keep those barricades in place forever.

It didn’t take long until only that old familiar gall could keep her warm in place of her husband’s touch and the monsoon heat. Everything else paled in comparison. She was the first to instigate fights and the last to apologise. She could hold a grudge for days, weeks, months -- the time lengthened like a prison sentence. After a number of years she and Henry hardly spoke. She took to sleeping in one of the hideaway houses she had lined up in case of emergencies -- father’s lessons never strayed far from mind.

The total degradation of her marriage was fortuitously interrupted by Jacob’s letter summoning her back to London, bailing her out of her predicament. Evie departed India quickly, lightly-packed, leaving only a poor excuse of a letter for Henry to find, explaining as best she could that she couldn’t let her ruin his life any more than she had already ruined her own. She convinced herself she was doing the right thing, but the shame twisted her gut into tangled shackles all the way to England.

Upon her arrival however Jacob was nowhere to be found, and only Frederick stood to greet her with news of her brother’s sudden disappearance. The inspector looked as old and tired as she felt while he delivered the news. She only half heard him before she was sprinting for her brother’s apartment nearby, shouldering the door open and searching the space as though Jacob would round a corner any moment and greet her with that same rakish smile he always wore. His blood-splattered furniture made her own boil in the vein, and she clenched her teeth. With very little urging required from Frederick she began the hunt for Jack in earnest. She never dared admit that it was just an excuse; they all wore their own guises -- Jack with his white shroud, and she with her duty, her unending missions.

Roaming the streets, it quickly became apparent that this was not the London she remembered. The air shivered here, but she had always run overly warm to the touch. Great plumes of steam billowed white from her nose and mouth with every exhalation, but she remained in her layers of light silks. On the streets people only ever walked from place to place in packs now, afraid to be alone, often congregating on crowded corners to hurl insults at Scotland Yard, demanding results. Fear -- of the unknown, of Jack and his henchmen, Jacob’s old gang of Rooks -- stalked every street of Whitechapel.

Her own latent anxiety trembled at her fingertips, and Evie unleashed it the only way she knew how. Twisting the arms of abusers savagely behind their backs and parading them before crowds in selfish justice. Lifting false journalists up by their throats until they whimpered beneath her hands, toes dangling above the ground. Spiking men’s wrists to the wood-panelled floor where they shrieked and twisted. Throwing grenades that spewed clouds of noxious red-orange fumes, brilliant as a Calcutta sunset. Fighting terror with terror, blood with blood to rid the city of defilement; if this was what Jack wanted, then this was what Jack received.

No matter her zeal, the tasks ran slower than Evie would have liked. She was old now. Practically up for retirement. Her knees complained when she made a long leap to a gabled rooftop. Every morning she awoke groaning, and no amount of soaking in a hot bath could soothe her aching muscles. After rescuing a number of Nellie’s girls from captivity, it came as a surprise when one of them gave Evie an appraising glance, leaning forward and looking over her shoulder before saying, “You know, if you’re ever free I’d be more than happy to entertain you for an evening. Or two.”

At that Evie blinked. How long had it been? She could scarcely remember Henry; he was always so gentle with her, too gentle. She never could quite convince him to brand her skin with bruises.

Shrugging the prickle of desire away, Evie demurred. “Thank you, but your gratitude is enough.”

A tempting proposal to be sure, but Evie was accustomed to denying herself tempting proposals. Sometimes she thought that was all she ever did -- her life one great bounty poster of denied reconciliation of her own wants. She couldn’t allow for a lapse now, of all times.

In spite of herself she slipped at the Owers mansion. _Control yourself, Evie_. Her father’s voice drifted through the years, but whatever restraint she once had was left behind in the city. Here in the far-reaching wooded estate, there was nothing to stop her from driving the blade into Lady Owers’ body once, twice, four times, the blood dying her black in a wounding spray until Evie lurched away, breathing heavily.

It was because of Jacob’s absence, she told herself, the anxiety gnawing her up from the inside. Still she could not chalk up the tremour in her hands all to nerves, and as if in penance she snuck out of the manor completely unseen, spilling not a drop more, keeping a short leash on herself even as she slid into place atop a stolen carriage and lashed the horses to a frenzied pace.

Nobody but the dead knew of her disposition, but Frederick was quick to shove a newspaper headline in her face upon her return from the Owers mansion. Finger pointed, accusing, he spat invectives. “I should have you arrested!”

Evie didn’t have the heart to do more than rankle, silent. He had every right -- the bold print was correct, after all. Nobody knew, but a shadow of suspicion lurked in Frederick’s eyes.

The police would no longer help her; indeed they eyed her warily in passing, noting her leonine walk with the same fear in their gazes as Jack’s men. Saving Mr. Weaversbrook’s son fell to her alone, but the minor victory rang hollow. When he thanked her, profuse in his gratitude, a muscle along her jaw twitched. He looked something like Jacob -- the slope of his cheeks, the breadth of his shoulders -- but there the similarities dipped into the uncanny valley, and she almost resented him for it, looking like her brother but not being her brother.

Suddenly now her departure for India all those years ago lanced her with guilt. She should have stayed. She shouldn’t have left Jacob all on his own to fight these battles for a city that cared nothing for them, gave them nothing but misery, years upon years. It should have been her missing and presumed dead -- most probably dead. She struck that last thought from her mind with the same viciousness that she struck the life from one of Jack’s men guarding the hulk prison ships, heaving his body into the sea with a splash.

The skeletal prows of the ships loomed black and colossal against the snow-flecked fog. Evie’s ankles stirred up the low-hanging mist as she crouched behind a pile of tall nets; by her foot a fish stared glassily up at her, but her attention was fixed upon a group of prison guards warming their hands around a brazier. The toss of a grenade, spikes driven into the big one’s wrist, pinning him to the half-rotted deck, and they all succumbed to their terror. While they shrieked and scrambled away Evie ignored them utterly, sweeping back the hood of her silk coat and stalking straight for the prisoners.

From a distance for a brief elated moment her chest clenched seeing the prisoners, fooling herself even for a second that one of them might be Jacob, calling out his name and rushing over to hold the cold iron bars only to see unfamiliar faces staring back. In the end after killing the chief warder, she managed to free them all -- blowing some out of their cells with explosives and tossing keys to the others.

At this point she must have been getting close. Jack must feel her teeth at his heels. Then why did every wayward breeze feel like a finger tracing the bridge of her neck? With every set of ground covered, Jack continued to elude her in this fight against futility. Free the prisoners, and upon ringing for Frederick she only discovered that Jack had struck again in her absence.

On the ferry ride back to the city Evie remained on deck, arms crossed, leaning against the railing, relishing the frostbitten air, the slap of waves against the hull. She hadn’t yet found the time to clean herself up from the last mission, and blood still caked her gauntlet, the soles of her boots; she would be arriving upon the scene of Jack’s latest victim herself still fresh from the kill. Perhaps that was all part of his grand design as well.

This was never the life father had wanted for them, but try as she might Evie couldn’t imagine herself being anything else. If not an assassin, then what? A merciless ruffian for hire? A drunken brawler on the streets? A mindless, headless killer behind bars? A monster like Jack?

The scent of iron haunted her all the way to Whitechapel, and more than one unwary passer-by scurried out of her path at whatever they saw in her gaze. When she arrived, stepping across the threshold of the dwelling on Dorset Street, the police on duty were too preoccupied to bar her entry. Adjusting the gauntlet on her wrist, wishing she’d had the chance to clean it, Evie ducked inside.

Mary Jane Kelly’s murder had been staged for her like a painting. Broad lurid strokes of red and black across a white canvas, savagery in every knife stroke. Hand trembling, Evie lifted the sheet covering the body, and for a fugitive moment the breath was snatched from her lungs. Her organs were missing, the space where her heart had once resided a gaping carnal maw in her chest, as if Jack had drawn a portrait of her there to grin back at herself like a reflection. Evie stared down the dizzying precipice as though looking into a mirror, still reeking of blood as though she had performed the deed.

“Monster!” she snarled. “You damn monster!”

At her sudden outburst a policeman came investigating. “Oy!” he began as sternly as he could muster, crossing the room. “You’re not allowed to be in here!”

He grabbed her by the arm, club raised, intent on guiding her from the premises by force if necessary, but as soon as he touched her Evie whirled around. The hidden blade jutted from her wrist with a soft hiss, and seizing him by the throat she pressed the metallic edge just beneath his chin.

She could do it. She could let go. It would be so easy. Just a swift cut to the jugular, then killing two more flanking the door outside; they wouldn’t even see her coming --

“Let him go! Evie, get a hold of yourself!”

Frederick was yanking hard on her unyielding arm, struggling to pull her back. With a growl she shoved the policeman back, where he slunk from the room, clutching his throat and rasping for air.

“Who is she?” Evie demanded of Frederick, pointing at the body, voice swooping on a note deep in her chest. “Tell me quickly!”

“Tell you! By what right?” Frederick snapped back, trying to guide her from the room, but she snatched a fistful of the collar of his shirt and refused to budge.

“Listen to me! Jacob knows -!” She choked on his name, speaking of him only in the present tense, never the past.

“What the devil has gotten into you?” Frederick pushed her hand aside and fixed her with an unwavering glare.

 _Just that,_ she thought. _Just the devil._

“All the evidence points to your brother, your ‘Order’, _you!”_ He jabbed an accusatory finger beneath her nose and she resisted the overwhelming urge to fix her teeth in it. “You need to deliver the Ripper’s head on a spike soon, or I’m afraid there will be nothing to stop my men from arresting you in his stead!”

His threats meant little. Assuming he could catch her, a life in chains was one she already lived.

“I’ll get you his head, Frederick,” she swore. Her hands curled into fists at the thought, the alluring triumph of severing Jack’s neck and tearing his head free. “Even if it costs me mine.”

It took only a few minutes to decipher Jack’s message and storm from the premises to hunt down more clues. Focused and boiling she heard as though from a distance Frederick seeing her off with a parting, “Don’t let your fury blind you, Miss Frye. I would not lose you, too…”

She ignored him, flicking her wrist out to zipline to the rooftop and sprint along the gambrels, heels pounding across the faded tiles. Dropping down to ground -- too hard on her knees, she really must get better about that -- Evie’s gaze combed over the cemetery where Annie Chapman was murdered. The world silvered at the edges, pale and stark and iron-coloured, and she could still see the old blood stains as bright as the noonday sun. She read the scene like an open book, pacing from splatter to splatter, fingers tracing the bevelled edge of a tombstone. She mimed throwing a ring away before she found the item itself, shining in a magpie’s greedy beak, and reading Jack’s hidden message scrawled across staggered surfaces.

The other crime scenes presented much the same, and with every old murder mulled over, every, she could feel the seething in her stomach rise, until her caution was forfeit to the winds. Jack lured her to his birthplace through the looking glass, to the scene of the first crime where his mother died.

Nobody truly knew about her anger, but somehow Jack did, and by the time she realised it, she was too late. At the scene of his mother's murder, she caught a glimpse of a bomb sparking at the corner of her vision before everything went white. Unbidden, the rage pooled to the surface like blood drawn to a wound, blotching the skin. She thrashed, fists flinging out at anything that moved nearby. The wrath sang in her throat, in her jaw and teeth, in the fire of her lungs. She choked on it like a river mouth choked with limbs and leaves, blood-stained, blood-guilt, swarmed with enemies on all sides. This must have been what it felt like to lose her mind.

It was only when she recognised the voice -- it couldn’t be Jack’s -- that she was able to see clearly again. A stranger stared up at her with terror in his gaze, and she was crouched over him on the ground, poised to strike the life out of his body with a rictus snarl on her lips.

He’d gotten inside her head, and she had almost lost it. That was of course what he had wanted all along. To kill her, yes, but first to torment her, to drag her to a place where only he resided and where only she could join him even for but a brief moment in their wild wrathful solitude. To be alone, to remove their masks, to look her in the bare-faced eye and say, “We’re the same, you and I.” To drive the blade into her chest and watch the life drain out.

But almost only worked in horseshoes and hand-grenades, and he had not lobbed his near enough the mark, the fumes from the hallucinogen washing off before the fury could fully devour her and all in its path. Evie would not fall for such tricks again. He had his chance, and he’d missed, and now she would hunt him to the madhouse.

Lambeth Asylum towered grim and stark-eyed with its myriad steep-gabled rooftops and the hard glare of its camed windows. Not a single policeman noticed Evie’s entrance; they could not suspect her or the Order after this was all said and done. Even if she died in the bowels of this wretched place, they could not know. Some things were bigger than themselves -- a concept Jack never could understand.

Inside the patients ran amok, shambling around the halls in their pin-stripe rags like the dead risen from their graves. Stalking the corridors, Evie descended into the abyss where Jack waited. Her footsteps echoed across the brick facade with each step bearing her deeper beneath the asylum, alert, every sense crackling with fervent static. As she rounded a corner, a groan stopped her in her tracks. Wide-eyed, she whirled around and rushed to a heavy steel door. The profanity hatch grated as she wrenched it aside to peer in.

There, slumped over on the hard unforgiving earth, Jacob lay shackled and bound. Through the gloom Evie could see the red welts at his wrists, the manacles chafing his skin raw, his face a pale ghost of its former self in the shadows. The rush of relief that swept through her felt like a physical blow to the chest, squeezing tight around her windpipe.

Alive. Cuffed and tortured, but _alive_. Jack had been foolish enough to stumble once before, but this was easily his greatest mistake yet, giving her this hope gleaming thready and once-vestigial. She reached out to open the door, but Jack’s bodiless voice interrupted her.

“Welcome to the reunion, Miss Frye!”

Wary, Evie sloped away from the door, silently vowing to return as soon as she had dealt with this horror. Above her the narrow hallway branched out into a high barrel-vaulted ceiling, twin-levelled and echoing with the screams of ward patients locked away in their cells, dim, distant, and panicked. Sweeping the area with her eyes, Evie looked for any sign of Jack but found none.

He leapt down on her from above, knocking her to the ground and straddling her waist. Grunting with the force of the impact, she flung an elbow behind her, catching him sharply in the face and granting herself enough time to scramble away and regain her footing. Seeing him here now, Evie bared her teeth and closed the space between them once more with fist and blade. With a laugh, he blocked every blow, returning his own with a brute force that left her winded and clutching at her middle for air.

Jack batted aside her throwing knives like they were flies, continuing to advance. When he caught the side of her face with his fist, she staggered back, blocking a series of blows in furious retreat. Desperate, she fumbled for a smoke bomb at her belt and threw it on the ground, escaping to the shadows in the ensuing explosion of mist.

“A coward to the end, I see! Just like your other half!” he taunted, prowling the basement for any sign of her.

He paused to adjust his mangled top hat in the light of a lantern. How smug he seemed. How confident. How in control in his own wildness. As she watched him circle their final arena from beneath her deep cowl, he continued to vaunt, his voice a slow easy drawl in the darkness.

“There is a sickness in this world, Miss Frye. It made our Creed weak.” He climbed the steps to the second landing, and she followed, swift and silent in stark contrast to his broad-shouldered boasting. “But I am here now. I will tear into all sickness, all the rot and shit of this city and rip it out! We shall be pure again!”

Sneaking up behind him, Evie lashed out. Though she had caught him unawares, landing a few solid strikes, Jack recovered quickly. With an animal snarl he grappled with her forearms and cast her aside as though she weighed nothing at all, but rather than advance he turned to a lever upon the far wall. Yanking the lever down, his action was met with the clang of bars, and the scuffle of bare feet, unleashing the asylum’s patients in droves.

Incensed, Evie fled once more to the shadows, but she could not hide from the thronging horde forever. She scattered them with gaseous grenades and hidden spikes impaled with pinpoint accuracy, and as she fought Jack jeered from the upper floor. “Show me your monster, Evie! These lambs need slaughtering!”        

Even now knowing it for what it was, the bait was so tempting. She hungered for it and she knew she always would, but she would not give in, she would not rush headlong into her own desires. Her wrath she would reserve for Jack and Jack alone. She would meet him in that garden of no light; she would look him in the eye, and she would persevere where he could not.

The asylum patients now fleeing the scene, Evie pulled up her hood once more and waited, watching. Jack searched for her in a livid pursuit, knocking aside a lantern in his rage and shouting, “I lose patience with your child’s play! This is my time now! Jacob’s is done, and you must choose! I’ve seen you wield your tools of terror. You’re just like me.”

As he turned a corner, she trailed after him, creeping in his footsteps. He heard a creak in the floorboards, but too late. Ducking beneath a savage slash of his knife, Evie grabbed his wrist and twisted, wresting the blade from him and snarling, “You will not make a monster of me!”

Turning the knife over in her grasp, she pinned him against a nearby wall and drove the blade into him. Again and again she carved the edge of the blade into his body, every strike fierce, crude, and unfettered. Whenever he sagged over his wounds, staggering to the side, she propped him up again to resume the onslaught anew, burying the knife into him to the hilt and wrenching it free until the cloth of his dark greatcoat grew heavy and sodden with gore. Each stroke of blood that showered onto the floor sounded like a verdict, and Evie could taste the copper-fresh tang in the air with a mounting frenzy.

Where his movements grew increasingly sluggish, she felt liberated, silk-gloved hands slick around the handle of the blade, quick and vicious as a storm. In vain he tried to resist, to smack her arm away, but Evie bent his arm behind his back and broke it with a sickening crack before pulling him up by the scruff of his neck and entombing his own knife in his chest, this her final ruling. Hands grasping at the hilt, he dropped to his knees, the sound dulled by the blood pooling beneath him, glistening richly in the low lantern-light. Blood-splattered and exultant, flushed with triumph, Evie reached down to tear the knife from his chest for one last act.

She killed him. She cut off his head. She tossed it away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> “I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” - Robert Louis Stevenson, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde


End file.
